February 3-9, 2020

The beginning of different sections are bolded. Feel free to take out different sections depending on the age of your children. 

Opening song

Opening prayer

Introduce topic: “Today, we are going to learn about how living the gospel can make us happy.” It doesn’t have to be that exactly; it just helps to pull the lesson out from the beginning so that the kids can look for it. 

Scripture Reading Option 1: Read 2 Nephi 5 (especially verses 10-18) and instruct your kids to follow along. As they follow along, have them raise their hand whenever someone reads a line that shows how Nephi’s people lived after the manner of happiness. For example, as you read, “…did cause my people to be industrious…,” the kids should raise their hands. You can pause when a hand is raised to point it out, or you can keep going. 

Scripture Reading Option 2: Read 2 Nephi 5:10-18. Have the kids listen carefully. When they hear something that helped Nephi’s people be happy, have them draw it on a piece of paper. Share drawings afterwards.

Scripture Reading Option 3: Help them to read 2 Nephi 5:27 (good for toddlers).

Discussion: You can ask any combination of the following questions. 

What does our family do that makes us happy?

How do you feel when you serve others?

When have you built something you were proud of?

There are different ways to have your children answer these questions depending on age. They can just straight up answer the question obviously. You can have them draw their answers. Pair share: They can whisper the answer to a sibling, and then you can ask for a couple of answers (helps everyone participate and helps younger kids learn how to verbalize answers before speaking them out loud). Lastly, you can reach out to one or more of your children to bring something they’ve built that they can share during the lesson; this one is neat because they feel extremely involved.

Game Option 1: You can play charades. Choose actions such as “emptying the dishwasher” or “helping up someone who fell down.” Sometimes it helps to have more than one person work together as a team.

Game Option 2: Smiley face/frowny face game. Give each child a piece of paper. On one side of the piece of paper, draw a smiley face. On the other side, draw a frowny face. If your kids are particularly young, try and help them grasp the differences between the two faces and what they mean. Then, a parent (or you can take turns with the kids) yells out actions that can make someone happy intermingled with yelling out actions that can make someone sad. The kids are instructed to hold up the smiley or frowny face depending on how the action would make them feel. If you want to go even simpler, have them place their index fingers on either side of their mouth. They can push their mouths into a smile or frown depending on the action.

Testimony: Bear your testimony or prepare one of your children ahead of time to bear their testimony.

Closing Song

Closing Prayer